Medvedev: hard to pronounce for some!

Carl Masthay

Medvedev - the new Russian president’s name
(Dmitry Anatolyevich Medvedev (Дмитрий
Анатольевич
Медведев) is pronounced
/myih-DVYEH-dyif/. This needs some explanation. Some Russian consonants
intrinsically include or produce palatalization, the sound of “y”
before high vowels, like /yeh/, which is written simply as “e”
as opposed to the nonpalatal “e” /eh/ (Cyrillic backward
“e” - э). Here the m, v, and d
are palatals. Next Russian stress rules require that the primary stressed
syllable produces a clear, full, strong, original sound (here /‑dvyeh‑/),
whereas the vowel of the syllable or syllables preceding it is weak and the
syllable vowel after it is also weak (somewhat the way English polysyllabic
words work). That /yeh/ goes to /yih/ in both cases here. Most Slavic languages
also devoice final originally voiced consonants, thus “v” usually
goes to /f/ unless there is a following voiced consonant in a following syllable or word.

So what does “Medvedev” mean? The suffix
‑ev/‑ov means ‘(son) of’
(a nominalized reduction from genitive “-ogo”
usually pronounced with weak vowels /ova/, which should not be confused
with feminine nominative surnames in ‑ova) and Russian
medved´ (with a prime sign for the mark of palatalization)
‘bear’, probably descriptive of a clumsy,
bulky person. Among animals the bear was of special consequence. Its
original Proto-Indo-European name *rktho-, later *rkso-,
resulting in Sanskrit rkshos, Greek arktos, Latin
ursus, Armenian arj, Celtic *artos, was
taboo in Gaelic (math-ghamhain /mahowin/, Mahon
‘good-calf’!) and in all Slavic languages, and it was
alluded to instead as the ‘honey-eater’
(med-v-éd´), partly through fear perhaps
and partly as a rival in the search for honey (Russian mëd
/myot/) in the woods, from which was made hydromel, or ‘mead’
(Russian mëd, Greek methy [source of our chemical
prefix “methy(l)”]). The v arose from the noun theme
u in hypothetical *medu-yed´ ‘honey-eating’,
like Sanskrit madh(u) v‑ád-
‘sweet-eat’. The Polish reflex of ‘bear’
is a further taboo word with negative aspersion: niedźwiedź,
with miód /myoot/ ‘honey’ debased into
niedź- under the influence of nie ‘no,
not’.